


A Thousand Stolen Memories

by jenn_locke



Category: A Thousand Perfect Notes - C.G. Drews
Genre: Classical Music, Doing What Cait Would Not, F/M, Fluff, Near Future, Please Read The Novel It's Amazing, Post-Canon, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, the ending we deserved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 13:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21036797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenn_locke/pseuds/jenn_locke
Summary: Three years after leaving behind Australia, his mother, and, most importantly,August, Beck is shocked to find a familiar face on his doorstep in Germany.





	A Thousand Stolen Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, loyal readers of mine, I sincerely apologize for a) vanishing off the face of the earth in the midst of several fics, but... Well, it's me, what did you expect. And b) throwing a fic at you for a book you've probably never read.  
HOWEVER, you should absolutely read this book, because it's fantastic and emotional and will make you want to cry from the very first page (at least, that was my experience). It's on BookDepository, because we love small Aussie authors whose books you have to get shipped from England to be able to read (Cait, if you're reading this, <3), and you should go order it and her other book, The Boy Who Steals Houses, RIGHT NOW, and then read it, and come back to read this fic because that ending, while amazing and emotional and perfect for Beck and what he needed, IS NOT WHAT I NEEDED.  
So, here's the ending I needed, and maybe, if you've read it, it's the one you needed too.  
(Also, read on desktop and you can roll-over to see the German translations)

Beck practically falls out of his seat when Joey jostles his shoulder, peeling his fingers from the piano to turn his hearing aid on. The choppy white noise merges into decipherable words, his sister already halfway through her sentence.

"-here to see you," she finished.

"What?" he asked, swinging his legs over the piano bench to face her.

"That girl from home is here to see you," she repeats, and then promptly spins on her heel and leaves the room to go back to her toys.

It takes him a moment, almost embarrassingly, to call back the memories from Australia. He and Joey have lived the past three years in Germany, under the loving care of Uncle Jan, being given anything they could ask for (there was an abundance of chocolate those first few months, and an abundance of stomach aches afterwards). Before that... Well, his therapist says it's natural for memories closely related to trauma to be foggy, and they can deal with that when he's ready.

But... he remembers _her_.

He throws himself away from the piano, stumbling down the sprawling staircase and skidding to a stop when he sees a young woman arguing colorfully with the butler (_butler_, that one had taken time to get used to. No more dedicating every spare thought to Joey's care, no more scrounging for scraps in the kitchen every night. They were taken care of for the first time he could remember, and he was allowed to _breathe_).

"I know him, I swear," she insists, crossing arms that have blue Sharpie doodles peeking out between woven bracelets. "I've got a CD and everything!" He's almost shocked by how familiar she looks. There are blue ribbons wrapped around dirty blonde hair and glitter around eyes as blue as the ocean (he's seen the ocean now, Uncle Jan took them the first chance he got, and it was _beautiful_\- he wrote a song almost as soon as he got home). She has sandals on her feet and he can't help but admit to himself that he expected her to be barefoot.

And when she looks past the butler and meets his eyes...

She smiles.

And he does too.

"Beck!" August cries, sandals slapping the tile and echoing into the grandiose ceiling as she envelopes him in a hug.

"_Herr Keverich?_" The butler seems shocked and Beck can't really blame him. There aren't exactly rabid fangirls for teenager German composers, and anyone taking a passing glance at the two of them right this very moment would think exactly that.

"_Ich kenne sie von zu Hause aus,_" he affirms, and the butler nods, disappearing into an adjacent room.

"Look at you!" She steps back and looks him up and down with an appreciative grin, his cheeks coloring red. He feels awkward in his own skin, having grown into the Keverich height and curls, but still lanky and skinny as a rail, almost like he hasn't been eating his body weight in decadent meats and sweets the past few years. "Last I saw you, you were muttering curses and scowling at the world! And look at you now! You _smile_!"

He grins at that. "_Dinge haben sich geändert,_" he says, earning a scoff. "How did you even find me?" he asks in wonder.

August merely shrugs. "Not that hard to find out where the best composer in Germany lives. Just gotta follow the lines of adoring fans."

"I'm not-" The words fall out of habit and she swiftly cuts him off.

"You are, don't lie, you're fantastic!" She rattles off compliments like they're nothing, but they settle into a comfortable weight in his heart. "I've been watching all of your videos and you've somehow gotten even better than you were before!"

He doesn't mention the months of nightmares, the panic attacks that set in whenever he heard piano, the fact that it took him a solid year to even touch to keys again and a year after that to play without breaking down halfway through the movement.

"I never did get around the writing that sequel of yours," he admits instead.

"Psh," she waves it off with a blue-covered hand. "You owe me dinner first. Joey too, where's that angel?"

"Upstairs doing _Gott weiß was._" He turns slightly and hears the pattering of footsteps on the landing. "Learning to eavesdrop."

August grins. "Well, I'm here for the month. I'll just have to see the gremlin some other time."

"You're here for the month?: It sounds impossible long and frustratingly short at the same time.

"And then I'm off to Amsterdam," she pulls out a map and unfolds it halfway, revealing western Europe covered in colorful dots and the routes between highlighted. "But not before your live performance."

His heart leaps into his throat. "You're coming?"

She smiles and it calms him, a familiar reassurance, a familiar memory, a _thousand_ memories, each one stolen between the blur of what he's glad to forget. "Wouldn't have missed it for the world."

**Author's Note:**

> I learned a lot of things while writing this fic, namely that being the first person to write a work for a fandom is A LOT OF WORK, because I had to invent ALL OF THE TAGS and GO BACK AND SEE WHAT AUGUST'S LAST NAME WAS, AND NOW I WANT TO CRY AGAIN (and that writing in present tense is harder than I thought...), so yeah, a lot of work.  
I make no promises to update any of my other works, but I _can_ promise a fic for the Six of Crows Big Bang with some magnificent art when that finishes up, so stick around.


End file.
